1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to software. More particularly, the present invention relates to software for creating digital photo albums.
2. Description of the Related Art
Modem photography is moving into the digital age. Even though a large part of the market for photography still utilizes conventional film and processing, the ability to obtain digital files from conventional film is rapidly adapting the conventional film market into the digital image arena. In addition, with the broad acceptance of digital cameras, as well as broad utilization of digital images in Internet applications, the volume of commercial and consumer produced digital image files has increased dramatically in recent years. Suppliers now routinely deliver digital image files to users. Such files may be delivered on storage media, like photo CD's and so forth, or may be delivered via the Internet or through e-mail. The provision of digital images in an organized format, including the preparation of digital image photo albums, is now available in the marketplace, as consumers desire to receive and present their images in a most favorable light. However, there has yet to be introduced an automated system that presents digital images in sophisticated creatively composed fashions.
There presently exist several software applications, which assist the user in manual creation of digital photo albums. In general, these applications provide the user with a straightforward means of accomplishing the basic task of image organization and page layout, so called ‘albuming’. The drawback with such applications is that they require a large amount of user interaction, which does not yield much improvement over the conventional, paper based albuming techniques of the past. Therefore, the task is less likely to be completed due to the significant amount of effort required to accomplish it.
Automated albuming systems that offer limited automated layout functions are known in the art. Eastman Kodak Company has developed digital graphic album applications, such as the Kodak Picture Page software, which allow a user to organize digital graphics images into album pages. Typically, users organize images by dates and times, places, subject and so forth. Such software allows the user to annotate the images by entering text, or other data, describing the image. One common approach to automated layout is the use of templates. In this approach, predefined layouts with empty areas are filled in with user images. Thus, the size, placement, rotation, and framing of the images on the page are predetermined. A user or system merely needs to specify which images should be placed in which empty area to complete an album page. This approach is also widely used by many graphic layout design tools (such as Quark) and by Kodak® PicturePage® Software. Templates provide a straightforward and working solution to the layout problem. However, this solution is somewhat limiting as the choice of layouts is bounded by the collection of available templates. Variation in page layout design can only be achieved by the addition of new templates.
The real challenge in automatic generation of page layouts is allowing a level of creativity in the layouts produced. With the introduction of scrapbooking as a social activity, there has been a recent resurgence of interest in capturing memories and telling stories using scrapbooks. The albums produced by people in these communities can range from extremely basic, where images are laid out using a fixed grid or template, to extremely complex, where images are seemingly scattered randomly on a page. In such layouts, it is very difficult to define, in an objective fashion, what the layout approach is.
Consequently, a need exists in the art for an automated system and/or method of organizing and generating album and page layouts of digital images.